I've had my ass handed to me here and there as I've gone along, and this is how I've been trying to get back up, the best that I can.

transgender

I remember listening to a StuffYouShouldKnow podcast the other day on willpower – that it’s finite. Resist one thing and it’ll get harder to resist something else.

My mother called me twice in concern over my shoulder. At first I resisted contacting her back – saying to myself ‘I’m not falling for that again’.. (she’s a narcissist)

But ultimately I fell for that again and responded to her facebook message, poured my heart out on how much my shoulder hurts (injured it a few days ago) and got four words in response ‘hang in. How’s work’ and then nothing after that even telling her how work was, she ghosted.

People ghost a lot.

I tend to say to my shrink ‘no one cares about me’. Which is draining to her because she cares, I know.

I think what I mean by care is.. empathy. Sympathy.. I don’t know. I don’t feel that many people care about me in any good strong way. No one hates or loves me very much. I have two cousins who do love me, a cat at my parents house who does, a sister who does *sometimes*.. and all of these have a huge caveat, as you know.

So for family I know the ‘dance man’ rule well, and can tell exactly when and how I break it. I don’t know how to fix it when I break it… I think what happens is they see something interesting on the edge of the radar of ignoring me and come back for another show, and I’ll exhaustedly put on the monkey suit and dance again, because what else can I do?

I don’t know what the answer is at all when it comes to friends or lovers, because I don’t have any and I don’t know why, and no one will tell me.

So.. with no empathy towards me, I feel like I have no choice but to drink the poison of self pity, which makes me feel worse. I don’t know how to cope with nothing in the ‘belonging’ jar. I’m exhausted, I feel like I’ve tried everything. I am empty.

I don’t know where to start. I’m queer, I’m trans, I love cooking, I knit, I play guitar, I garden, I love the ocean, and iceskating, and contra dancing.. But those are some my pac-mans. I don’t know what the whole of it is, what I wear on my sleeve, to hopefully find a tribe with other sleeves like mine.

I have been trying to fit in with the queers here. But being queer is for me an ‘Oh P.S, I’m queer’ thing, not an ‘I’m queer!’ thing, if that makes sense. It’s part of my make up, but I’m not front and center about it, nor am I about anything else up there, so I have to figure out what my front and center things are.

I can obviously go into the ‘”I am thoroughly used to being different shades of shadow and not being allowed to be otherwise so that’s the only thing I know how to do’ pity party, but fuck that.

…okay, I am really tempted to do that, actually =D

Obviously I’ve got to allow myself.

I want to figure this shit out. I want to find a tribe, instead of bursting out everything that’s happened during the week to my shrink, because she’s basically the only person I talk to. (I can’t help but see it as some kind of horrifying Wilson, Tom Hanks thing). That doesn’t seem useful shrinkage, at all. A tea party, instead of actually getting down to business. So, I don’t know how, but let’s do this.

My not sleeping is of the ‘Freddy’s gonna kill me’ variety, not a manic one

Brave vs. Courage (1)

Hugging mostly sucks (2)

My house does not equal home (plus it’s tidy, but not clean. I don’t know how this connects to any of my issues, but it probably does) (3)

Lamictal helps me survive, but in doing so hampers my ability to live

My acceptance window is shut, but my tolerance window has never been closed.

1) Cousins see my Steve Rogers side, which lights up a genuine Captain America for them. For them, (and my cat, back at my parents’ house) I feel courage.

For everyone else I know, it’s bravery. They see the sexy uniform and shield, and for them that equals the Capt. The don’t care to see the Steve Rogers behind it.

2) Which is also why hugging them, even touching them, makes me feel disgusting. They are hugging what they want to see, what they think is real, a courage, but because they don’t care to see the Steve Rogers part, my actual courage quails, because they’re touching it, dragging it to light, without bothering to care about it.

Hugging strangers is better than hugging them. Strangers haven’t formed an opinion, whereas family insists on theirs, and fuck mine.

3) The ‘house not being home’ pain used to be ‘not allowed’, but now it’s, I see that I’m allowed (but that’s still hard). but the worst of it is that no one else is there. Friend, family, or lover. All those are different kinds of pain: Friend: regret, shame. Family: a young abandonment. Lover: a bitter self disgust. Plus all three have a wistful, missing them feeling to it.

PS: I got a diagnosis that makes sense, finally. PTSD, and ADD. The ADD is biological, and the PTSD, you know how that goes. I don’t know how to fix it, there isn’t a right answer. I wish I had a mentor, though, an older guy. The past six years I’ve been trying to learn ‘guy’ on my own, and before that, trying to learn ‘human’ on my own. I am a blob of ‘not raised.. at all, really’, and I’ve been having a hell of a time trying to do it alone.

What’s almost worse is the flat affect I get when I talk about anecdotes: One of the bus drivers, turns out, is just a big an Elvis fan as I am. I put myself under all sorts of shields when I told my aunt that one silly thing.

At home with the immediate family, I am used to pretty much everything I say in that sense, small talk, tastes, opinions, anecdotes, get skewered for being wrong, stupid, bad.

(I said all this in group, the question was where are we at, is group helping. I mean two people were on my side, but then the last person to share was closed mouthed as anything. We both do that.. and this time I didn’t, and they still did, and I felt like my sacrifice was for naught, like I was betrayed, haha)

Okay, but anyway. The wrench.

I emailed my aunt about a photo on facebook, asked her to take it down, pre transition, whatever. She emailed me back, hasn’t been on facebook for over a year, but she’ll try to take it down, etc.

But she called me by my birthname. In email. Emailing me, typing out my birthname. This is weird and concerning, to me. It’s been four years, she’s seen me as I am now, -feminine I am not- and she wrote it down in an email. I didn’t even care in an it’s about me, *dysphoriaaaa!* way. I mean I did, but to myself, it was just a twinge of ‘eeecch’ – as it goes, you know. I was outwardly concerned about her, so I called up dad, and mentioned it. That’s the wrench: I brought up the queer, more specifically the trans. I knew it’d be awkward, I knew it’d bring things to a stop and there would be a ‘smell’ for awhile from, danno, rainbow farts =D

But I was worried about my aunt, because, and dad said so too, it was ‘disconcerting’, that she did that.

What has my mother done now, you ask me.
Well, that pivotal moment when I chopped off all my hair to transition and whatever? Years ago. The hair was there, I was going to donate it to locks of love. Mom took it. I swear she said she’d do it, donate it, or throw it out.

I’m trying to read Bear’s new book. (I have Johnny Cash’s biography too, both from the library.. oh I wish I could still read!!)

But the point is family. I wish I had one of my own, a chosen family. I hope it’s just the depression talking, but I echo so much that I doubt I ever did.

I don’t know where I fit. I’m a four years transitioned transsexual (dude). To my bio family I’m a cousin, (that one’s weird since no one’s near me in age anyway) a brother (Bueller..?) a son (you’re joking) and a nephew (to whom?). They’re a bit of a traditional gender divided bunch of irish catholic kind of thing. On thanksgiving the ladies are in the kitchen, the lads are watching football, and no one blinks. But that’s just barely looking at it. In the middle of it, it’s like, ‘you take him’. I’ve crossed the line and am not part of the girl circle anymore, and I can see that. I’m not a girl, but I don’t know that block very well yet. But the guys don’t want a thing to do with me either.